Eclectic Seeker

The substance I was addicted to was heroin. While I was actively addicted, it absolutely came before everything else. My life shrank around it. I kept using despite very real, very obvious negative consequences. If you’re looking for something that fits the “compulsion + harm + loss of control” model, that was it.

But what’s always sat strangely with me is what happened when that context changed.

Once my abusive relationship ended and I was no longer in an environment where it was readily available, it was shockingly easy to stop. I’m not saying it was physically comfortable. My body was pretty pissed off for a while. But psychologically, it just didn’t have the same hold anymore. I wasn’t spending my days white-knuckling cravings or constantly thinking about it. It dropped out of my life in a way that, according to the 12-step model, is not really supposed to happen.

And that’s where my issue with that framework starts.

Because 12-step ideology tends to assume that if you have ever had that kind of relationship with one substance, it reveals something fundamental and permanent about you. That you now have a generalized “addictive nature” that will attach itself to other substances or behaviors if you’re not constantly managing it. That you are, in some essential way, always on the verge of transferring that pattern onto something else.

And that just hasn’t been true for me.

I was a near-daily cannabis user for years. When it started consistently making me feel physically uncomfortable instead of good, I stopped. No drawn-out battle, no existential crisis, just “this isn’t giving me what I liked about it anymore” and I moved on.

I drink occasionally, in social or celebratory contexts, and I genuinely find alcohol kind of boring outside of that. It doesn’t have much pull for me.

I tried gambling once, got annoyed at how tedious and overstimulating it felt, and left the casino in under an hour. I have not felt remotely compelled to revisit that experience.

I use the internet a lot, and I play a handful of video games, but I can also go on a camping trip with no signal and be completely fine, unless you want to try and find something pathological about nature photography, in which case you can blow it out your ass. If anything, I generally enjoy the change of pace. There’s no sense of panic or withdrawal or “I need to get back to my computer/consoles immediately.”

So when I hear the idea that addiction is this broad, transferable trait that will latch onto anything with quick reward or low friction, I just don’t see it reflected in my own life.

What does make sense, looking back, is context.

When I was using heroin, I was in an abusive relationship. My environment was unstable, stressful, and honestly pretty bleak. The substance didn’t just exist in a vacuum. It fit into a specific set of conditions where it functioned as relief, escape, and regulation.

When those conditions changed, the behavior changed with them.

That doesn’t mean there was no dependency. There obviously was. It doesn’t mean there were no consequences. There very much were. My grades suffered. I dropped out of college. I lost my apartment because staying out of withdrawal and numbing out from the abuse felt more important than paying rent.

But it does suggest that what we call “addiction” might not always be this permanent, identity-level trait that needs to be managed forever. Sometimes it looks a lot more like a relationship between a person, a substance, and a specific environment.

When that’s the case, then a framework that assumes universality - “if this happened once, it will always be waiting to happen again, with anything” - is going to miss a lot of variation.

I’m not saying 12-step programs can’t help people. Clearly they can, or they likely wouldn’t exist in the way they do. But I do think they’re often treated as the model of addiction rather than a model that fits some people and not others, and when your experience doesn’t match that model, many people who swear by them will assume that you are misunderstanding yourself, in denial, or “not taking it seriously enough.” This paternalistic attitude only serves to make me even more skeptical of the framework.

For me, what mattered wasn’t declaring myself permanently “addictive” or treating every pleasurable behavior as a potential threat.

What mattered was getting out of the environment where that pattern made sense in the first place.

There are two great problems with what happened to Margaret (and that her parents are trying to do to Juliet). One is easy for modern people to spot (but was also a common response back in her own day). And that’s the moral implications of what was done to her. She was too young to be married, and it was horrifying that she was forced into it so young. Every one of the adults around her either acted immorally or failed to protect her. They were wrong. This is what modern people see, and it’s important to remember that people back in her day mostly agreed with it. You’re supposed to think it’s fucked up! When girls were married that young (and it didn’t happen often!) it was a formality 99% of the time. It was for dynastic or financial reasons (the girl has lots of money and/or land and/or a title that her husband wants), but the “couple” don’t consummate their marriage for years. And it’s not just that they would have separate bedrooms. They might not even live in the same country until the girl was in her late teens and physically and mentally mature enough to bear and raise kids. Hell, a lot of times they didn’t even meet until the girl was older! They had this thing called “proxy marriage” where you would have two separate ceremonies, in two separate places, with each party saying their vows separately, one in one city and the other in a different one. So, yeah, sure, the girl was technically married at 12, but she didn’t actually meet her “husband” in person until she was 17 and they didn’t start sleeping together until she was 20. That was a thing they did.

The other problem, the one that modern people don’t notice, is dynastic. See, marriage wasn’t generally because you loved someone. It was because you had the resources to support a family, and you or your family wanted to pool those resources with someone. It’s about “our family has these resources, and we want that to continue.” It’s about continuity across generations. It’s about making sure that your children and grandchildren have the best possible resources to survive and thrive, whether those resources are land or a trade or a title or money or whatever. In order for this to work, you have to have kids! The family and the family’s resources depend on the married couple having children. If the couple doesn’t have children, the marriage is a failure. And that failure affects not only the couple, but both families. This is a really big problem. And you can’t have just one kid to pass on the family name, because half of all kids die in early childhood. If you want to be safe, you need several kids, to be sure at least one will survive to adulthood (when they can marry and pass on the family name and resources.

You know what happens when a girl has her first pregnancy too young? She is very likely to either die in childbirth, or have complications that destroy her future fertility. Just like Margaret Beaufort. Just like Juliet’s mother. In other words, the marriage is a failure, not just for her, but also for her family, and her husband (who can’t divorce her, it’s not allowed except in extremely rare circumstances), and her husband’s family. So even the people who didn’t have a moral problem with adult men having sex with pubescent girls had a practical problem with girls married too young because you are very likely to destroy the entire purpose of the marriage by doing it. As Shakespeare reminds us in the play through Juliet’s mother having been married too young and only having one child.

another thing i noticed, the year my local community shakespeare theater did r&j, and i made the costumes so i got to watch the show every night: part of why capulet is telling paris, take your time, get to know each other, no rush, is that he still has his nephew tybalt as his heir. as long as tybalt is in the picture, there is no pressure on juliet to go further with paris, than get acquainted. once tybalt is killed, then suddenly capulet needs an heir, he needs a husband for juliet, now, this week. (the role of capulet is best given to the actor in the company that can do over the top apoplexy, you need to believe his urgency comes at least in part by how clearly he could drop dead any moment from giving himself a stroke)

i feel like this play is often taught in middle schools as if it was somehow relevant to, or about, teen hormone storms. really it's got more to do with the social structures around family and inheritance. leaving that context out makes it confusing, why is capulet suddenly flipping from nice dad to evil dad?

Tags passing peer review, gonna share.